First Bar Hop Proves Better Idea than Execution
Eric Richardson
[Flickr]
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — My last twitter message from blogdowntown's first bar hop, held on a cold but dry Friday evening, sums up the night:
Buses slow. Battery dying. We detoured to whiskey.
Indeed, logistics were not our friend on Friday night, but a group that peaked around seventeen made our way to four Downtown drinkeries.
The Late Night DASH, intended to be the centerpiece of the night, was not showing itself off well. The operator told us that two of the buses had broken down earlier in the evening, leaving wait times a little uglier than normal.
Those waits led to a slipping timetable which eventually forced a route detour. After hitting Cole's, Nick & Stef's and Broadway Bar, we eventually ended up making our way over to Seven Grand as the night wore on.
Those who, like me, tend not to make it out much late at night will be pleased to hear that Downtown's nightlife seems to be doing quiet well. All of our stops were lively, and a healthy line waited outside Seven Grand at the midnight hour.
One of blogdowntown's resolutions for 2009 is to do more events, so you can expect us to reprise this sort of a night in not too long. Just expect round two to be a little simpler to execute.
browne on December 22, 2008, at 06:58PM – #1
It's hard to have a barhop in LA. The bars are too far apart and the transit doesn't run frequent enough, so you end up just kind of walking which kind of sucks in heels.
There needs to be more bars right next to each other. When we tried to have a barhop we didn't see a Dash and the bars we chose weren't open yet or had a cover for a silly band or had just had a band with too loud of music which makes it hard to talk...the nature of LA makes the barhopping experience a bit annoying. Maybe LA is just not a barhopping without a car town, maybe its more of a get in your car and drive drunk and get arrested town...lol...
LA is very conducive to bringing your own flask and walking around, but trying to find enough bars that don't suck well and no lines and not too insanely crowded with no suits...Los Feliz (Rustic, Drawing Room, Good Luck, Dresden, Tiki, a bunch of places in between that keep closing and opening, then you got Macho Burritos so you can eat without going through a bunch of changes) is pretty much the only place you can sort of do that at in a fun and productive way and possibly that has to do with the fact that they also have a taxi queue and taxis that look for drunk people...hell you can also get on the red line and pop out and go to the white horse and I won't keep naming places because you will think I have a problem, yeah the east hollywood vicinity is very bar people friendly.
Browne
browne on December 23, 2008, at 08:10AM – #2
You know what you should have Eric. A appetizer restaurant hopping night. Map out a plan. Call the restaurants ahead of time and order appetizers. I read in the downtown news that 15 eateries have popped up just in the last month or so. That way you could do it earlier and you could try all of the new eateries. That might work out badly too, but worth a try. Also with appetizer hopping you could invite families. Bringing a baby to a bar is weird, bringing a baby to a restaurant, possibly annoying to others, but definitely not weird.
Or maybe on a Saturday the slice of pizza hopping after noon. You could go to Rocket, Pitfire, the Pizza Next Door and all of the other pizza joints.
Browne
Eric Richardson (@blogdowntown) on December 23, 2008, at 09:18AM – #3
Browne: I'm really hoping that we can turn the Late Night DASH pilot into something more long-term, and it really does make this sort of thing doable (though Friday night didn't exhibit that well). On other nights I've had much better luck.
Both appetizer hopping and pizza hopping sound like great ideas.
rob on December 23, 2008, at 10:53AM – #4
Bar hopping downtown is very much a possibility as long as one is willing to step of ones normal scene. It is a drag that bars aren't next to each other or even a little closer to one another, but they are still walking distance from one another. An example the edison and bar 107 are a short walk from one another and usually very fun bars, but different types of environments. Arguably on different ends of the spectrum, but if one is willing to open to it, they are both fun bars. Cover charges are also a waste from my opinion and experience any bar worth going to wont charge u a cover charge. I think the downtown bar scene is still immerging but it looks very promising.
shannon on December 23, 2008, at 03:40PM – #5
we did a downtown bar crawl one night...hanks, hotel figueroa, golden gopher, craby joe's, king eddy and casey's for the loo on our walk back to the cars. all done in heels no less on my part! it's definitely do-able and that was pre-late night dash days.
chatty cathy on December 23, 2008, at 05:46PM – #6
we started at Coles, ate at the blue place next door, went to the Association, waited 15 min for DAsh. Went to O's. Waited 15 more for Dash. After 3 drinks I was done....yes, I'm a wimp
Juanito on December 24, 2008, at 01:56PM – #7
Merry Mombo.
Happy Hootchie Kootchie.
Merry Kootchie Happy Mombo Hootchie '08/Yes We Gonna, Everyone!
Juichi on January 03, 2009, at 02:58AM – #8
Thanks for putting together this bar hop. I think despite the few issues it was a lot of fun. I wish more people would have shown up. I follow a couple of bar hopping groups and the few that do events downtown generally attract non-downtowners. I do hope you do another one.
Definitely doing group events to all different sorts of places would be fun.
Bar hopping in downtown is very easy. You just need to know where to go. The biggest issue is that you have these barless stretches in between bars. So if you want to go from Cole's to Broadway Bar you have a bit of a walk to get there and really nothing in between the two. You could go in the other direction and have a nice route without much time spent walking.